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Silence. Then, very quiet: “It’s forty-two degrees.”
There he is.
“Forty-two. That’s not a snap decision – that’s a considered barricade. Which means you were already awake when it started. The voices came before breakfast.”
A long pause. The bed frame creaks – him leaning against it.
“She told me Biscuit hasn’t been fed.” His voice is thin. Scraped. “Over and over. He hasn’t been fed, Derek. He’s hungry, Derek. Why aren’t you home.”
“When did it start?”
“Around four. I can’t always tell. It’s like the television coming on in another room – you don’t notice until you’re already listening.”
Five weeks ago, he couldn’t describe it from the outside like that. That distance is the thing we’re building on.
“Derek. Sarah sends you photos every Wednesday. Did she send one this week?”
A pause. “Tuesday. He was on the couch.”
“Was he fat?”
An unexpected sound – half a laugh, choked off. “He’s always fat. She gives him cheese. Margaret would’ve killed her.”
“So Biscuit is catastrophically overfed. He is living out his twilight years on a couch in New Jersey, consuming dairy products and judging pigeons through a window. Margaret does not need to worry about Biscuit. Biscuit is thriving.”
Silence. But a different silence – not the clenched, cornered kind. The wavering kind.
“The voice isn’t Margaret, Derek. On your good days, you know that better than I do.”
“On my good days.” He says it the way you’d say on paper.
“I don’t want to be this,” he says, very quiet. “I don’t want to be the man who barricades doors.”
“I know.”
“I had a practice. I had patients. I had Margaret.”
“You still have most of those things. Losing her doesn’t make you less. It makes you hurt. And hurting and losing your mind are different zip codes, Derek. We are fixing the circuit. That’s what the medication’s for. That’s what I’m for. That’s what this extremely cold floor is for.”
The bed frame moves. Metal legs dragging on linoleum – a terrible sound, but the right one.
The door opens. Derek stands there in his gown and socks, white hair vertical on one side, face blotchy and wrecked. He looks down at me.
“You look absurd,” he says.
“Fully aware.”
“Those pants are ruined.”
“They were ruined the second I sat down. I’m classifying it as a charitable donation. Tax-deductible. You’re welcome.”
His mouth twitches. It doesn’t get all the way to a smile – it stalls somewhere around his eyes. Luke smiles like that too.
“Biscuit’s really okay?”
“Biscuit is a cheese-addled monarch on a cushion throne. Biscuit has never been better.”
We put the bed frame back together. When I leave twenty minutes later, Derek is eating toast. Not with enthusiasm, but voluntarily. The difference matters.
